Intransigent
by Oreo-ism
Summary: With the past war that has ended with severe destruction and drastic losses for everyone, it leaves everyone with a haunted memory of the people they have lost. War and death makes a survivor, but also alters a person into a monster of inner turmoil. Nobody knows that yet, as the end might just be the beginning of something else, something worse.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: just finished Insurgent a day ago, and this plot bunny immediately popped into my head. My rendition of what will be the third book, just surely not what will happen! I'm thinking more of (as fanfic shippers) Four-tris centric problems that revolve itself around the war. Surely, Veronica Roth's will be an amazing take on both Fourtris and Faction-war itself! i have to put warnings that i have a feeling mine will be a darker story! Also, what do you think Veronica will name her third book? I'm guessing Convergent or Assurgent! What about you guys?**

**Big big bigggg thanks to Divergent From District Four, a lovely girl that beta-read this chapter for me! thank you!(: also, shoutout dedication to SshannonW, who broke my heart with her recent chapter and left me to wither! Goodluck to you and your sis' exams alright!(: **

**Disclaimer: disclaimed with a broken heart. -shattered- **

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Majority of the dauntless start to bang their fists on any solid surface, the walls, the floor, the table tops. Half of them are shouting in what seems like it will burn their throats, clearly showing defiance. The Erudite survivors argue among themselves, probably about the logic behind Edith Prior's video that Tobias had just played. The Factionless traitors, as part of Evelyn's plan to overrule the faction members we have present here, yell back at the defiant Dauntless in outrage.

From where I stand, I cannot see Tobias' reaction to all this chaos. Whether his face is sulking with tire, angered with betrayal, or simply blank with nothing to show. His breaths are even, casual. Yet, his posture lacks that similar indifference. I look down to the floor where Christina and Cara are seated. Cara's face is contorted so uncomfortably, I think it could have hurt. Yet, she doesn't join the other Erudite, and instead, keeps her lips pressed together in a tight line. She resembles Will so much that the guilt numbs me for a short while, until I look away.

My eyes move to Christina, who is yelling and banging the floor like all the other Dauntless. An act of pure defiance; whether towards the Evelyn and the Factionless, or the video, I do not know. I can't help but smile, just a little, at her. A Candor-born being Dauntless, just like she always is. Then, I turn to look at Caleb once more. A Prior. He must have been stunned at the mention of Edith Prior, someone in our family from the past. Caleb notices me staring, I know he does, but he doesn't stare back. Maybe he's guilty, or maybe he knows that all he will see in my eyes is himself, taking the place of the person who betrayed me. _Traitor._ I bet that's what he will see, like a neon sign above my head.

Somehow, the thought of calling him a traitor fazes me. A small part of the Dauntless in me looks right at the betrayal and addresses it. An equal portion of Abnegation beckons for me to embrace forgiveness and look past his mistakes. And the Erudite in me does what it does best. Compare. It compares me to my brother, from the color of our eyes down to the decisions we make. In the process, I find how illogical and irrational it is to call him a traitor when I am one too.

I betrayed Tobias, and Will, and Christina. I betrayed Marlene, and Uriah. I betrayed my ex-faction, and all the people that loved me. So who am I to call Caleb the traitor I see him to be when I'm no different myself? If I, myself, am worse? But I am selfish. I have to remember who I am, who I was before, and who I was before the war had been a girl, too selfish to be selfless, too selfish to be forgiving. Maybe I can forgive Caleb with who I am now, look past the injustice he had presented to me as he left me to die, and forgive him like I have to forgive myself. Purely for survival. Purely to live with myself.

Purely for my own sake.

I can't. I have a feeling that I'm becoming more and more like Peter, though I detest him. I can't afford to trust someone that dented me before. Well, unless that someone is bleeding to death on the floor, cruelly gutted by a weapon that was meant for me. If so, then my forgiveness would make things even.

No. I will not be like that. I will not become Peter. I will not. I must not. I cannot. Slowly, all my thoughts dissipate until it dawns on me that all I'm doing is escaping reality. Escaping the gravity of the situation in front of me, and escaping whatever happened before that. Jeanine Matthew's death, Evelyn and Factionless' corruption, Lynn's death. And I can't take it anymore. My conscience can't take watching one more body slump, or hear one more gunshot ring out into the open.

It hits me hard on the head until my brain throbs inwardly. My chest squeezes, and I sag into Tobias' side as my throat starts to tighten. My cheeks feel hot with suppressed anger, and my eyes burn with unshed tears. I can't breathe, like in the lab simulation. I feel a hand tighten around my neck and push inwards, almost severing my airways. He holds me up tighter, stronger, and puts his cheek to my hair.

"You okay?" He whispers. I want to answer him, but I can't. My mind can't form answers, and my lips can't form words. I can't tell him that Lynn is dead. I can't tell him that Caleb didn't even try saving me. I can't tell him that if I had ceased to exist in this world, none of this would have happened, and Al, Will, Marlene, Lynn, and my parents would all still be alive. Shauna would still be walking. Erudite, Abnegation and Candor would still be factions. Chicago would still be peaceful. In the end, my throat responds with an abnormal guttural sound, sounding almost like I am choking on a sob though I am not.

Christina reaches for my hand and squeezes it, as a form of a comforting gesture. I squeeze back stilly, and it might have been weaker than I intended it to be. I realize how my self-indulgent act of wallowing in my own pity and grief has tuned me out from the rest of the bustling room.

Suddenly, a shot rings out of a gun barrel, and the bullet shelling clatters onto the floor at Evelyn's feet. It snaps me out of my reverie and urges me to duck under, hiding from a bloodbath that is sure to come. Instead of frantic screaming and shoving, the whole level goes quiet. Another shot rings out, another shelling clatters against the floor, and though I cannot see it, I know that a Dauntless body fell to the floor. A strangled shriek tears at the walls of my throat, but make it out only as a quiet sob.

I hear some of the Erudite immediately stifle a scream, while one or two Dauntless wail beside their fellow Dauntless' limp body. I can see the perfectly round hole in his head now, his eyes hauntingly open as crimson blood and gray brain matter ooze out from the wound. Tobias stiffens further than he already is, like a wound up spring being wound up further. His fingers tighten around my arm so strongly that I swear it hurt. There will be bruises. Still, I do not tell him, because I know if I open my mouth, my voice will crack, sobs will surface, and tears will fall.

An Erudite girl, as I can see is to the left of Caleb, fails to hold back her shock and panics. Caleb immediately covers her mouth with his left hand and soothes her arm with his right, hoping he did it fast enough for Evelyn not to notice. Yet, she does, and I cringe at the splatter of blood on my brother's face as the body he had been coaxing goes limp. My stomach feels upset, and black spots are dancing at the peripherals of my vision, closing in on me ever so slowly.

The wails go silent as two more rounds echo from Evelyn's side of the room to ours. The two Dauntless girls fall to the floor, one dead and the other clutching her shoulder, biting her lip and glaring at Evelyn through the tears in her eyes. I push my face further into Tobias' chest, squeezing my eyes shut with my ear pressed right above his heart. I hear it, an escalating rhythm that rummages fiercely, angrily.

Is he staring, like the Dauntless girl, at Evelyn as the disbelieving son she reconciled with, or as someone else that is completely unrelated? The almost feral growl that rumbles at the base of his throat tells me that he is the latter. He is the Dauntless member that values his faction and its determination. He is the one that values this camaraderie, the people of his faction. And now he is staring at his mother, Evelyn, the Factionless leader whom has just murdered 2 Dauntless comrades and injured one. Out of what? Out of cold blood.

Then, I hear it. I hear him. "You killed Lynn..." says Uriah. His voice is barely a whisper, but the room is dead silent that it's easy to hear. I pull away from Tobias to look at him, and the look in his eyes is accusing. It's wild. "Your stupid plan killed Lynn!" This time, he yells. Evelyn raises her eyebrows just like Jeanine does, and looks at Uriah inquisitively. The hand wrapped around the handle and trigger of the gun shakes, I notice. It is the result of someone, untrained in using the weapon, feeling the recoil of the gun in her bones from wrist to shoulder. Untrained like an Erudite.

And the Erudite like her and Jeanine are heartless, blood craving creatures, unafraid of a little murder.

My heart pounds too quickly. The black spots continue to dance a little further into my central vision, and my legs feel weaker. I am drained, with exhaustion, with the simulation, with trying to keep composed. Evelyn is going to shoot Uriah. I'm sure of it, and I can't watch, after the last 3. I am being torn asunder, all on my own. I cannot take this. Tears burn in my eyes, surfacing and welling up under my eyelids, and I do not feel it when one slides down the side of my face.

Uriah lunges forward too abruptly that it scares Evelyn into stumbling backwards. Her aim wavers, but she gets it back at his chest again. The armed Factionless men hold him back by the arms, although it does not stop him from going for her neck. I remember how I did it to Jeanine, all the rage, all the hate, and how triumphant I felt in seeing the raw fingernail scratches on her face.

The Erudite hall reverts back to its usual monotony, pale and bleak, all of a sudden. And Peter is already pushing me forward and away from that woman's lab. I consent. Tobias is limping towards me. I realize which situation this was, and remember it. His eyes are cold, and I feel cold as well. He doesn't look at me, from anger. _You die, I die too._ He looks over his shoulder, but not at me. He stares at the floor indifferently. Am I really that hard to look at? Were my actions, actions of a true Abnegation, that detestable? _I asked you not to do this. You made your decision. These are the repercussions. _

No, this isn't real. This has already happened. But I can't seem to get out of this. I do feel tears in my eyes, and I close them, until I choke and cry. I don't want to relive this. I want to get out. _Tris._ I know that it isn't real Tobias yet, but my eyes open to his voice anyway. _You have to. You have to survive this_. I ask him why. I ask him why I have to. Why can't someone else do something for once? What if I didn't want to live? It is the only time that death has felt so inviting.

_I know._ I can feel the warmth of his skin. I can hear the softness of his voice. I can also feel death inviting me again, inviting me to sleep. Sleep and never wake up. _I know it's hard. The hardest thing you've had to do._ His fingers trail down my neck and over my shoulder. _I can't force you. I can't make you want to survive this. But you will do it. It doesn't matter if you believe you can or not. You will, because that's who you are._ The determination in his voice is evident. The desperation behind it is far more obvious.

I remember kissing him. Without barriers, without secrets. Just insane bravery, and insane need. I close my eyes and wait to feel it again, but Tobias disappears. My heart feels empty, until I hear his voice again. _Tris! I want to see her!_ He shouts. Desperate. A boyfriend, completely broken at best by the one thing he cannot prevent. My death.

I am at the door, and my palm feels cool against the glass window. In this position, I feel hopeless. His palm is on the window too, eyes swollen from crying and soul bruised, and torn, and broken, to the point of severe breakage. I imagine I can feel his warmth through the physical barrier that separates us, because we have nothing left. All I am left with is Tobias, and all he has left is me. Well, until I'm dead. His eyes close, and I can almost feel him crying, almost feel his tears dampening my hair and his controlled breathing down my neck and cheek, struggling to contain the sobs that will escape him and break his will.

I can imagine him trying to stay strong, like he has always done regardless of whatever that has happened, because he knows that it makes me strong too; I will be strong, and stay strong, as I give my life to the cruel people that want to claim it. I can feel the anguish in his soul pouring out in silence, maybe because it's how I've always felt him. Or maybe it's because our emotions are unsettled and raging, and the walls can't keep us apart. I can almost feel him pleading, for help or at least for me to depart peacefully, to die protected in the hands of God. Painlessly.

In this moment, all we have is truly just each other. Nothing more, nothing less. No arguments, no secrets. No kept emotions, no kept fears. Because I am going to die, and because he knows that I am, there is no need for anything else but just a moment of quiet.

Just a moment to remember who we are, and embrace them.

When the moment is done, I accept fate and remember who he is. Tobias, Four, my instructor, my best friend, my protector, my lover. Dark blue eyes, intimidating yet dreamy. Beautiful yet dangerous. I remember him like that until the needle is in my neck. I remember him like that until the heart monitor is flat. I remember him like that until silence engulfs me, and I am dead.

The silence stretches. I remember how I learned that simulations end when I am dead. How dreams end when we die, and then we wake up. Still, I am in silence. I can feel myself descend, plummeting towards the ground, but I do not wake. This death feels almost comforting, except that it's not. I know that especially well when the shrill ring of yet another gunshot bursts through the comfort. Uriah. Evelyn shot Uriah. Anger surges in me, and as I pull myself to the surface, I can hear murmurs of people talking.

My eyes blur into reality, and I blink a few more times until my vision is clear. The first person I see is Christina, more interested with me than with the murmurs further away. I am on the ground, and if I remember correctly, I had been standing before my episode. Tobias. What if she shot Tobias instead of Uriah? I panic, as Christina's eyes search my face. "Tris? Tris, are you okay?" Her hand sweeps the strands of hair away from my face. I try to find the words to speak, to tell her that I am, but the only thing I manage to say is, "Tobias?"

"Oh my god! Tris! You just passed out! I was so worried about you!" She says, bursting with joy and relief. I smile with the energy that I can muster through the feeling of lead in my bones. I hear Tobias' voice in the distant background, cold, brutal, and firm. He's not dead. And I'm glad.

"Did she shoot Uriah?" I ask.

Christina bites her lip and nod. "She aimed it at his chest." I guessed it. Uriah was dead. I can feel the tears prickling in my eyes. "The recoil was too great, though, and with her hand already shaking, the bullet went into his collarbone instead. He's not dead, but he passed out from the pain."

I almost sigh with relief, but yet I don't. Evelyn still did shoot him, and he was still injured. Christina helps me to sit propped up against a wall, my head and every part of me feeling like deadweight. I lean against it completely.

"What I want is justice. Justice for the Factionless!" says Evelyn.

Tobias scowls. "No, Evelyn. What you want is control! You killed the people of my faction with this gun, injured them, and you dare say that all you're asking for is justice!" He raises his voice at her, and leans closer to her. Her gun rises to his throat, and I almost gag at the sight. I notice the glint of a knife in between them too, and realize that the tip of the knife is resting on her throat. Tobias retracts the knife by a fraction as he presses the barrel further into his throat.

I can imagine how warm the barrel must feel to his lymph nodes. Evelyn did use it five times before. "I don't know who you are, I don't care who you are, but we, the Dauntless, the surviving Erudite, the Abnegation and the Candor, are going to leave this place alive. Don't try to stop us." He says, now deadly calm. His voice is almost lethal, almost the Tobias I don't know. But I don't care.

He drops his head by a fraction, and sighs subtly. The disbelieving son who trusted his mother. "I thought you were better," whispers Tobias. I doubt that anyone can hear him, because I too have to read the words from his mouth. They reek of disappointment. "I thought that if I'd forgiven my mother, that she would come back the strong, selfless woman she was. I guess I didn't know her well enough. I don't know anyone well enough."

Pulling away, he drops the knife to the floor and lets the metallic clatter of the blade ring against the floor. Tobias glares at Evelyn, her eyes looking at the floor instead of him, and he moves the glare to the armed Factionless around them. The glare must have meant something, or struck fear in them, since they falter with their weapons and stand a little further away. He lifts his chin off the barrel and steps back calmly, turning and starting towards me.

All eyes are trained on him. Eyes from the Dauntless, the Factionless, and everyone else. Yet, he only sees me, and grins almost subtly, almost subtly. "So what do we do now, Four?" asks Christina. She puts the emphasis on his nickname, the one that upholds the level of respect that he has attained among the Dauntless.

One by one, other Dauntless murmur in agreement, and the murmurs get louder and louder until the level is filled with the voice of Dauntless. The voice of Dauntless as one, united, together. Our spirit. I breathe the soul of our faction, and I feel alive. I feel a part of it.

Almost playfully, I eye him. "Yes, Four," He raises his eyebrows at me as he comes within inches of me. I have never really used his nickname as a form of respect, but as a vicious weapon used to insult him when I am angry. "I think all of the Dauntless want to know what you have concluded."

The Dauntless die down within seconds, to listen to his verdict. It is just magical to watch the effect he now has on all of us. He helps me up by the wrists and wraps an arm to the small of my back, then chuckles.

"Home," He says. "We're going home."

The nervous, expectant silence bursts into a roar of joy, a roar of determination and triumph, as they all stand and storm out of Erudite headquarters, running out into the open like the Dauntless I have known.

Beneath the roaring, I hear Evelyn, and I'm sure Tobias hears her too. "You're making a big mistake, Tobias. This is only the beginning." He doesn't spare a look at her, and with me in tow, walks out with the same triumphant smile that is on my face.

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**TBC!**

**REVIEWS IN THAT LITTLE BLUE BOX WOULD BE LOVELY(:**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: here's the next part! and the last day of my exams is tomorrow, chemistry and physics! wish me luck, oh gosh. **

**Reminder: this story shall take a sad, whump-ish hurt/comfort romance feel to it. and it seems that i'm tearing all characters asunder, so good luck to you and good luck to me!(;**

**disclaimer: disclaimed.**

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"This is only the beginning."

The same words that Jeanine had said, that Evelyn had said, both echo in my head. They should sound melodious, full of Erudite-like pride and similarity, backing the other up. They should sound great together, like how two people with the matching voices go perfectly well together in a duet. But they don't. It might just be my distaste for the faction, or my general distaste towards both of them, period. All in all, they sound horrible, words included.

I wonder what Tobias thinks about it all, but then again, I don't bother. He walks only in silence, staring either at the ground or at the road ahead. My guess is that he's too tired to talk, or too upset to, and I know that my questions will remain unanswered and shelved somewhere in the middle section of my brain. We have already been through so much today, and we are both just as tired of talking and arguing, shouting and screaming at each other until he's pissed and I'm breaking into fiery tears, of thinking of words to retort back and bruising each other's pride. I leave him to his peace.

I look around me, at the Dauntless that are in black, and the Erudites that are in the same blue as I am in. The colour is barely obvious now, hidden in the shadows of the cast night. I count the number of Dauntless at the very back of my head, subconsciously, and there is a hollow feeling when I realise how we started with so many Dauntless when I first chose the faction, and how we have ended with less than half of our faction, the rest of them lost to the war.

How is it that I try almost too hard to put myself at death's door and take one for the team, but I am not with them? Instead, I am alive and walking back to the home I once used to share with my friends and my Dauntless family. Now, at least half of them are gone, and several others are injured. How will Dauntless feel as whole as it had been before?

The emptiness starts to grow, the closer we are to Dauntless headquarters. We walk there, and my feet hurt, but the time it takes to accept that half of us will be gone, and that The Pit and the cafeteria will be half as empty, I cherish this time. I look around me now, under the shadows of night, at the people I know. Cara and Marcus help to support Christina's weight as she walks, and she cracks jokes to push the pain to the back of her head.

Then I look at Uriah, and the men carrying him. He must be under severe shock from the bullet in his collarbone, since he hitches in laughter from time to time like it doesn't hurt. I grin inwardly at the sight, since he's always been one to cheer others up. I bet a high rate that whatever he's mumbling about now, it is definitely about cake. "Tris!" He giggles in a singsong voice. "Triiiiis! Come'ere!" This time, he whines. He reminds me of when I was in Amity headquarters, under that serum they injected me with after my fight with Peter.

I leave Tobias' side - I think I may have caught him glancing at me - and jog up towards the men and Uriah. He beams at the sight of me, though I can see the glimmer of tears at the rims of his eyes, and dried little streaks staining the sides of his face. My heart wrenches at the sight of him. He is such a miserable man, just as miserable and as tortured as me. Over a short spam of just a few months, he's lost Marlene, Lynn, and has to live to see the sorrow in Lynn's now handicapable sister, Shauna. So much has changed over a matter of time, and I can see the same torment in his eyes as the one I recognize in my own.

I purse my lips and frown as I force a smile, pretending I can't see the snake behind his ear that is now bloodstained. Nobody told me he had been struck down by the butt of one of their guns, too. "Hey Uriah. How are you feeling?" I ask. He copies me pursing my lips and frowning, and holds it for only a matter of seconds before he cracks into a fit of giggles - one that would never ever go well with him, ever - once more. "Perrrfect!" He slurs, then accents himself on the last letter. "What 'bout you? You passed out just now... I think!"

I am not liking this. I fight the urge to grin at Uriah. No, I am so not liking this. But it just might be something _good_ enough to relate to him when he's well and sane. Well, humiliating enough. "I'm fine. Just a little exhausted I guess. How about this? When we're back at Dauntless headquarters, you get to eat all the cakes and muffins you want! Just rest for now, alright?"

Uriah's bright eyes turn a little darker, and it flickers over the time he stays silent to think. "Marlene loved cake..." He pouts, anguish invading his features. His lower lip quivers. "A-And Lynn... I-I re- I remember how..." His pauses start to form the same giggles he had a minute ago. "Lynn didn't tell... Anyone but she l-loved muff-ff-ffins!" Uriah continues giggling, inhaling and exhaling at an uneven pace, until his laughs are half sobs. His body wracks in both laughter and violent sobbing, and I realize how watching this war, of coping with his grief, waging within him is just that hard. I sympathize with him.

He has no-one. Maybe Zeke, but not anyone else that he loves. His best friends, Marlene and Lynn, are dead, and there is nobody else to comfort him with compassion and affection. Uriah is alone. It hurts me to say that, to think that, but he is. "They're dead..." The panic starts to seep into his tone, and his voice wavers, devoid of any laughter. "They're all dead, Tris. Th-They're all dead!" I watch as his eyes start to swell with more tears, and I hear him repeat the same words again and again; _They're dead._

There are things about grief that many do not understand. The only people that have been through such grievances learn that we never lose a person as a whole, but we watch them go piece by piece - The way the bed is never slept on to have to be made, the way the closets remain untouched. How their voices start to get vague and old when there are no fresh ones. The way their scent fades from their pillows, their clothes, and even their closets and drawers. Everyday, it gets a little harder to get back who they are, as when we gain one we lose two others. It is always receding until it's gone. We wake up, and another empty space fills our hearts, until the part is rid from our system.

But I can't tell that to Uriah. I can't tell him that that's going to be all that is left of Marlene and Lynn. Just an empty void or two, when the day is done. It makes no sense - because it is human nature to hold onto memories like this, but yet it does, and it is how cruel the truth is, whether inside the gates or out.

All I can really offer him now is my presence as a friend. I watch him with sympathy, while he watches me with weary, moist eyes. He continues to take sharp breaths in, too many in fact, but doesn't seem to have time to breathe back out. "W-What's going to h-happen to us?" asks Uriah, pressing out another tear as he blinks his eyes. I notice the use of 'us' instead of 'me', and my heart plummets from its rightful place, to my stomach. I know I haven't gotten over any of them yet, much less the guilt that consumes me by the passing minute. My gaze drops and I look away. I am supposed to be strong here, for him, not someone who will break down over the simple use of a plural word.

I inhale, and press my palm to the area above his cheekbone to wipe away his tears. "I... don't exactly know, Uriah. I guess we're just going to have to get our minds off them, make ourselves so busy and exhausted until it's time to sleep." My hand travels to his forehead, carrying a sheen of perspiration, and knotting my fingers in his hair - it has grown longer. My eyes barely slide over his perplexed features before they permanently watch over my fingers. "And if you're too tired to think, you'll be dreamless. And if you're not, you just have to... try to hold it in until it lets you go..."

Will it ever, is my question.

We stay like that, in silence, in grieving, and in question, until I hear his sobs decline into gentle, steady breaths. Calm, and my best guess is that the concussion from the butt of the gun got the best of him, and he's tired. I wonder if he dreams, because his features are so flawlessly serene that it just might be possible that he isn't. I hope so, because dreaming is bad. It's dark, and it's possessive. It keeps me screaming at an intensity that my voice cannot accommodate, and I wake with a hoarse voice and a severely sore throat on the mornings of such nights.

I untangle my fingers from his hair and almost start towards Christina - Am I, in any way, avoiding Tobias? - when Zeke chuckles his way up to me. "Uri must have been talking all about cake, wasn't he? That little sucker and his fudge." He says, and nudges me in the arm.

"Well, that _little sucker_ wasn't talking about cake. He was talking about Lynn and Marlene." I say.

His face contorts. "Aren't they, like... Gone?" He asks, and I stare at him pointedly with a stare that threatened to cut. Parts of me question if he is really that insensitive, and maybe he should learn a thing or two from Tobias. Not that they are any different. Tobias just one-ups him with his Abnegation properties. "O-Oh." Zeke frowns now, looking back at the unconscious Uriah from time to time.

"I should correct myself. He was more of sobbing about it. And giggling, then crying harder. It's painful to see Uriah in this state of grief. He was really upset about Marlene and Lynn. They were close."

"I can't imagine how devastating it must feel. My poor baby brother. Can't imagine what he's going through. I guess he's lucky that there's you, Tris, not that it's a good thing, of course." He says, heaving a sigh of weariness.

"You've never lost anyone close before?"

"What can I say? Things happen, and the people you know, bleed. I know it must be an act of selfishness to the Abnegation, but when I was in initiation, I made sure to distance myself far enough to be unaffected, never trusted enough. My strength, my weakness."

I nod. It's spectacular to know that we are even allowed to do this, to stray away from being hurt over and over, and over. I want to try it, but then, at the same time, I don't want to lose out.

Zeke then clears his throat and says my name. "Can I... Ask you a personal question?"

"Okay..." I say. I wonder what personal questions there can actually be.

"Uriah told me about your first night in Candor. He saw you throw that chair off the open ledge, then stand there." I feel bile rising up into my throat, making me feel constricted with no words at all. "You kept looking down. You wanted to kill yourself."

"Time, and guilt, and grief, and thinking and believing that you could have done something to save them but you didn't, it really does this to you. Make you a complete train wreck hurtling at full speed towards self destruction." And a lot more that can consume and spit you back out, for all of it to happen again. "But it will go away." I reply, and stare at him as if my eyes are peeling him layer by layer, trying on my own to get to his point.

He drops his voice lower. "Will that happen to Uriah too? I don't want the closest person I have to family to go around with a gun in his hand saying he wants to die. I can't lose my baby brother..."

"Maybe. But him and Marlene, and Lynn, were close. Will, Al and me, barely. It's the guilt that lives inside you that wrecks you, and Uriah's is huge. I do suggest you watch over him for a while. It has really been a frantic few months. I have a feeling that half of Dauntless have already lost." The half that is alive. The other half of Dauntless, I know, are the souls that are buried under concrete or soil somewhere, or being incinerated in a furnace to be let free of their bodies and ride with the wind. All too dead to be alive.

"And... You never told him?" By him, he must mean Tobias, since Zeke's eyes subconsciously move to glance at him. Somewhere in me, it squeezes, with guilt, and disgust - at myself - and something else that I cannot explain. It feels like submission, to the truth that I lie to Tobias half the time that we spend together, but also fear, because I can hear the strangle of his sobs from behind that Erudite door on the day I was going to die.

If he knows that I tried to kill myself - even if it was many weeks ago - I can't imagine how heartbroken he will be. I fear his look of complete repugnance towards my foolish idiocy - his slightly creased forehead, the darker shadows cast over his dark, shielded eyes, narrowed, the little crinkle on his left nostril, and his minimally parted lips, as if wanting to ask me why, but hesitating to speak. It will be a look that can strangle me and have everyone else to leave me be until I cease to breathe.

Yet, I feel pity, too. If I don't tell him, then all his weeks wondering why I have always been doing this and risking that will continue that way, in a state of illusion, delusion, and falsity. Inconsistency, inconclusive, unanswered, always in question. If I was him, I wouldn't want to be a part of that, let alone have my other half lie to me about something that serious. But I am not Tobias, with a threatening past spent with his abusive father, faith in his supposedly dead mother lost in the process of her betrayal towards her own son, all because of something so subtle as to who gets the governor's chair and hand picks the parliament party.

Also, I can't possibly walk up to him, look him right in his dark, mystic blue eyes and tell him that I want to die. I can't cry to him over spilt milk, as if he can put it back into the carton and make it seem as if nothing had ever happened. It did, and if it implicates me, I won't ever let it implicate anyone else whose problems are far more destructive – even if not by death or suicide – as it will just be selfish.

I am his lying other half, lying about something he can very well take to heart and never let go, and it will add to the burden he already carries. I don't want to be the one who will put extra weights on his shoulder just to see his legs buckle under him, immobilized and impaired from the heaviness. I will destroy him and become the worst person he will ever meet.

"No." I say as I exhale, so much air in it that it is reduced into a whisper. "He already has so much on his plate. Letting him know is like packing more to what he already has, something he doesn't need and can't take anymore, but will still stomach it down even if it hurts."

Zeke replies me with a fairly strong guttural sound created at the back of his throat. "Yeah. He barely speaks much to me anymore..." I know that Zeke says a couple more words after that, but my ears ring and render me deaf and unbalanced for a moment.

Just exhaustion. This is just exhaustion. _Or that damn poison they gassed you with outside Jeanine's lab_, says the part of me that has learned to make such sense of things. Being in Dauntless, seeing spots and having a ringing in the ears, lightheadedness and walking in a horrible squiggly line are obvious signs of an injury - or probably if you're just plain drunk, but I have never gotten myself that wasted before. Still, I am stronger than this. I believe I am. Coupled with insane Dauntless routines and the recent running around, if I can handle a bullet in my shoulder, I can handle a little bit of unidentifiable gas...

Or not.

I walk on, steadying one foot in front of the other. My arms are folded around my abdomen and my fingers start to claw in at my lower ribs - an attempt to hold myself up from the falling sensation in my nerves. Nonetheless, my vision blurs out and back in over intervals and the ground rocks me, like I'm standing on my two feet in a boat balancing unstably on water. I feel like I am straddling an earthquake that is pulling the ground beneath me apart in two very opposite directions, so I bow my head. My consciousness drifts apart in halves, one that has a steady hold on reality, and the ground beneath my feet, while the other feels like gravity pulling me to the floor.

The feeling is weird, to experience firsthand the effects of this phenomenon of such dual consciousness, that are as much different as they are alike. I succumb to one in exhaustion. The last thing I hear is the yells - my name - and the last thing I see is the road ahead of me, tilted, before the light in my eyes flicker out. I hear Tobias, his agile and nearly silent footsteps thudding hurriedly in the soil that my cheek rests on. He calls my name, once, twice, after an hour of silence.

Sometimes, it's just that comforting to hear his voice while in a distant moment like this. Even if I can't see the world in front of me, or understand what is happening to me now, I know I am safe. Even if I'm not.

* * *

**TBC.**

**reviews would be more than lovely! :)**


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